Dive Brief:
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Drinking more than five glasses of wine or pints of beer each week could increase the risk of stroke, heart failure and fatal aneurysms, according to a study published in The Lancet medical journal.
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The research, which studied the drinking habits of nearly 600,000 people in 19 countries, found that drinking about 10 to 18 glasses of wine or pints of beer weekly could take one or two years off the average life expectancy. Consumption limits should be lower than current government guidelines, the study concluded.
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The research was funded by the UK Medical Research Council, the British Heart Foundation, the National Institute for Health Research, European Union Framework 7, and the European Research Council.
Dive Insight:
Most consumption guidelines focus on the number of drinks someone can consume over a certain amount of time and still be legally able to drive, or how many drinks constitutes evidence of alcoholism, and not on specific health problems that can result from excess imbibing.
The National Institutes of Health considers the following to be at-risk or heavy drinking: men who drink more than four drinks on any given day — or 14 per week — and women who drink more than three drinks on any given day — or seven per week. One drink means 12 ounces of beer, four ounces of wine, or 1.5 ounces of 80-proof spirits.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cites the Dietary Guidelines for Americans in noting that moderate alcohol consumption is defined as having up to one drink per day for women and up to two drinks per day for men.
Guidance from the U.K. Chief Medical Officers is even more stringent. It recommends that drinkers consume no more than six glasses of wine or pints of beer per week.
It's doubtful many will change their drinking habits due to these findings, given the social and cultural trends surrounding alcohol consumption and new products designed to appeal to adventurous consumers — and boost declining sales.
Alcohol manufacturers walk a fine line. They want to increase sales, but not at the risk of harming public health. They need to appear responsible by advocating moderation, and some large companies — such as Constellation Brands and Anheuser-Busch InBev — have adopted social responsibility standards supporting safe, responsible drinking and marketing only to those of legal drinking age.
Meanwhile, alcohol makers have been responding to the better-for-you trend by coming out with low-alcohol and no-alcohol products meant to draw consumers who want to cut calories and limit consumption.
Sales of such items are doing better than the higher-alcohol category. According to GlobalData, their compound annual growth rate was 5.2% between 2010 and 2016 but less than 1% for the beer sector as a whole during that period.
There's no requirement that consumption limits be mentioned on product labels in the U.S., and the kind of transparency mandated by food ingredient labeling isn't being required of the alcohol industry. Since 2011, the U.K. has required consumption guidelines on most alcohol labels; however, two studies indicated that such warning labels — with or without consumption guidelines — have very little impact on drinking behavior.